The father also tremblingly approached his child, and kissed him through his tears.
Iermola watched them with a glance now sad and despairing, now bright and burning with jealousy; one single moment, one single word, had been sufficient to deprive him of his treasure.
"It was happiness enough for me," murmured the old man. "God takes it all from me. I must give him up; fate had only lent him to me. And I shall doubtless not live long. Sir," said he then, in a voice full of tears and emotion, "you see it is I who now supplicate you. I am old; I shall not live long; leave me my child until I die. I shall die soon, I am very old; then you will drag him away from my coffin. How could I live without him? Ah, do not leave me alone for the last days I have to live in this world; do not punish me; do not kill me, if for no other reason but because I have welcomed and reared your child!"
"We will take you away with the little fellow," cried Jan. "Come with him; we are more grateful to you than any words can express."
The old man interrupted him by sobbing violently; and Radionek hastened to run to Iermola as soon as he heard him crying. He knelt down beside him and hid his weeping face on his lap.
"My father, my father!" he cried, "do not weep; I will never leave you. We will not go away from your cabin; we will stay here together. I am so happy with you, I want nothing more."
Then the mother, seeing herself still forsaken, began to sob again, and nearly fainted. The neighbours, attracted by the noise, gathered on the spot and were witnesses of the scene. The cossack's widow, Chwedko, Huluk, and others shed the tears of compassion which the poor have always ready even for the griefs and miseries which they cannot comprehend, for the tears of others always suffice to move them to pity.
At last the father aroused from the momentary state of stupefaction into which his wife's words had thrown him; he sighed, and going up to his wife, spoke to her for a moment in a low voice.
"Whether you are willing or not," said he, aloud, in a stern voice, "you will be obliged to give the child up to us; he is ours, and we have witnesses of the fact. But you may ask anything you desire in exchange."
Iermola trembled and rose quickly to his feet.